Thursday, February 23, 2017

My Trip to Haiti

Most of our team in from of the clinic

I got connected with the trip to Haiti through some friends from Terre Haute, Indiana, who have come to Camp of the Woods in Canada for the past several years.  Their group takes regular trips to several places each year and one of them is Haiti.  When I asked if it would be ok if I tagged along too, they graciously said yes.

I flew out of Miami and met the group from Terre Haute there.  We traveled together to Port-au-Prince and landed there midday.  We were met there by Willem Charles, who was to be our host for this trip.  He is a Haitian who is known by almost everyone there.  He got us through customs easily, and then we made our way with our luggage past a gauntlet of people trying to sell us things and help us with our bags.  It was a little intimidating.  We got out to the vehicles, and I hopped in the van that we would be traveling in.  All of our luggage was thrown quickly into the back of a large truck, and some of our group jumped in the back with the bags.  Then we made our way through the streets of Port-au-Prince.  It was like a scene from the real Amazing Race.  Crazy traffic, lots of horns honking, people everywhere, no traffic lights, squeezing through tight places, passing on crazy blind curves.  OH, MY!!!

We made our way to the guest house where we would spend the week.  We had a nice meal every morning and evening in a new patio area that they had completed recently.  The weather was very pleasant for dining outside, and the food was very good for each meal. 

Our first supper

Dr. Mark, Julia, Paul and Willem



We slept in a room at the guest house that was very comfortable.  It was the first time I had slept under mosquito netting.  We did not have trouble with bugs during our stay, but we did have a couple of lizards who hung out with us every night.

Bunks in guest house

For five of the seven days we were there we went to the clinic. At the clinic I, being a non-medical member of the team, was limited in what I could do.  My job was to check people in.  I weighed them, took their blood pressure and temperature, and measured the height of the children who came.  I learned to tell them to "Sit here," "Stand here," and "Come with me."  And I touched everyone of them.  I found it such a moving thing to touch them, to feel the warmth of their hands, their leathery skin.  It was a pleasure to weigh the tiny babies, unwrapping them from the many blankets their mothers had them swaddled in.

The first day we were at the clinic we had to shut down early.  Willem told us that too many people who were waiting in line were using the bathroom outside and not going into the designated bathrooms.  We had to trust Willem's experience wisdom and experience in making that decision.  

The final day of the clinic I was able to change jobs, and I scribed for Dr. Mark.  I met the patient and through an interpreter asked about what ailments they had.  I asked questions about their symptoms and how long they had been having trouble.  I wrote the information on the chart, so that when the doctor came in he would just have to look at the information I had collected and ask further questions.  Then he would prescribe some medications, and I would write out the prescription for them to take to the pharmacy to get medicines.

Often the complaints were simply things like, "I have headaches occasionally," or "Sometimes when I eat I have heartburn."  And so the doctor prescribes Tylenol or Tums.  These people don't have access to even these common medicines on a regular basis.  One of the PA's on the trip was a fearless surgeon.  If anyone needed some minor surgery, she was ready to take it on.  We saw many pregnant women, some happy to be pregnant and some not so much.  Often we could hear the steady heartbeat of the unborn child echoing through the clinic as the doctor checked it out with a monitor.

Just one of the many children I worked with this week.

Every day at the clinic we ate lunch together at a pavilion on the school grounds.  Most days my lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  A couple of days I got rice and beans from the school cafeteria.  For students, this might be their only meal of the day.

Eating the school lunch

Our lunch time break

And so this covers most of the work we did during our time in Haiti.  But there is much more to the story, so I will save that for another day.





1 comment:

  1. Great to have you on the team Pam. You were a natural, and we needed you! Godspeed Paul

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